Today marks three weeks of being in Berlin. It feels like I’ve been living here for an eternity, but at the same time it’s all gone by so fast. Yesterday was 4th of July and it was also the first day I felt a little homesick. Our annual tradition always includes a large family party so I was definitely missing that. I wore my American flag shirt around the city and lake and got a few weird looks. I even had to explain what “Independence Day” was to a lady on the train. It was a small reminder that people have drastically different norms and cultures from you. This week was one of my favorites. On Monday, we visited a school and I got to talk to some 9th grade students. I was so incredibly impressed by their maturity and knowledge about current events. Anouk and Nico told me and Lindsey about their perceptions and stereotypes about the US and it was pretty hilarious. They instantly brought up gun laws and patriotism. They also asked questions about Washington’s weed laws and inquired what our schools are like compared to theirs. Nico even brought up the water situation due to agriculture and asked what our opinion about Free Trade (impressive, right?). Anouk mentioned that she was starring in a play and invited us! So Thursday night, Lindsey and I made our way to the children’s theater and oh my goodness was I impressed. They were doing a quirky rendition of The Crucible with little modern twists. Anouk, and the other cast members, were amazing. It was all in German, but we researched the plot of the play earlier so it wasn’t hard to follow. Again, these children showed such maturity and it was really cool to see. Besides going to the play, Thursday was a really eye opening day for me. We were tasked with reading a critic on higher educated being imposed as the only option after high school and then using some pretty big concepts to dive in. Printed in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Can Matthew Crawford Deliver Us From Distraction” was a very interesting piece. In class, my partner and I were given the lens of “representation” to analyze the article. We made some really profound insights to who is being represented and how are people being represented. We talked a lot about communication. Society represents based on expression and autonomy, mainly through learning and language. Learning, or knowledge, gives the ability for one to participate and communicate with mainstream society. If those abilities are lacking, one either isn’t represented or completely misrepresented. For example: the refugees that weren’t allowed to learn German in efforts to stop integration into German society. This form of “othering” is incredibly powerful. We talked about second-generation immigrants who were born and completely raised in Germany, but do not identify as a German. For example, they would say theyre Turkish instead of Turkish-German or just German. Society also represents individuals that are aiding and benefitting the country. We discussed in small, space politics. “Highly skilled people learn to develop an intelligent use of space, filtering out what they can afford to ignore” (Roth 5) and if you’re unable to correctly use space and filter information, you might be misrepresented. Another concept that really stuck with me was the ideas of individualism and community. One can’t be an individual without a community because they need societal norms to differ from. Manuela shared her experiences with art, revealing that there is no such thing as a blank canvas because even if you have a technically blank canvas in front of you, your history and society will never allow it to be truly blank. These are two ideas that I want to focus into my research. I can feel my topic changing so we’ll see where it takes me.